[ The realisations mentioned in
this post were accelerated by a quote I came across recently. Not only does it
capture my predominant emotional state, it probably applies to our entire
generation at large. The quote is a simple two-line verse written by Mirza
Ghalib and is part of a bigger poem popularly known as 'Koi Umeed Bar Nahi
Aati' and is reproduced here:
"Marte
hain marne ki arzoo main,
Maut aati
hai par nahin aati."
[I die in
the hope of dying,
Death
arrives and then never arrives.]
P.S.
Signing off with a song that has been stuck in my head for the past few days,
you can listen to it here->
P.P.S Pay
special attention to the verse sung before the actual song starts. It's
beautiful.]
Folks, this has been a summer of
realisations. Foremost among them is that you cannot make life happen to you.
An upside of this is that you don't need to convince/cajole it to happen to
you. If this sentiment sounds outrageous to you, stop right there. Let
me complete and then form your opinions. I believe in 'making my own destiny'
as much as the next other reasonably optimistic person though I have always
found the term to be a bit of a misnomer. What would life be if we didn't have
the ability to pave our way through it at our own tiny, inconsequential level?
However, there is a difference between equipping yourself to living life your
way and highjacking the very scheme of life itself. We live in a very
goal-heavy world. Everything we do has to conform to a time span.
Unfortunately, this time span is immensely susceptible to societal pressures.
In the mad rush of ensuring and cataloguing 'life experiences' or rather socially desired 'life experiences', we seem to
have lost the ability to actually 'live' these experiences. This is of course
just one aspect of it. The other aspect lies in accepting the fact that certain
things happen only when they are meant to happen. Making efforts to
force/cajole them to happen is more often than not a recipe for disaster. This
is probably most accurately manifested in how today's generation looks at love
and lust. There is not only a timeline for falling in love/lust, there also
seems to be one for falling out of it too! And probably the least rewarding
task is to make 'people' happen to you. Human beings, while being entirely
wonderful, are also the most capable of causing heartbreak ( :P )! We are, but,
a trifle in the grand scheme of things in the world. While it is commendable
and indeed desirable to make efforts to make our lives worthy, an incessant
effort to make this better/amass experiences shifts our focus from the very
crux of efforts itself-actually 'living' the tiny seemingly inconsequential
everyday experiences that more often than not build up to form larger life
experiences that we crave to make happen.
At this stage, if you are wondering
why I named a post about my protracted ramblings on life 'American Summer', let
me clarify. It took at unexpected interaction with a bunch of American Students
to had come my university for a short study tour to jolt me out of complicity
in believing that I could 'make life happen to me'. While at some level I could
and still can, this summer has taught me that at a deeper and more important
level, I would rather sit back and take things as they come for things long
anticipated and untampered with are often the best things that happen to one!
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